We Create Our Own Demons
by ekrolo2
Summary: It should have been their finest moment. Ultron and his army were defeated, the team was together and stronger than ever before. But when Fury's Hellicarrier falls and leaves everyone stranded on the floating Sokovia, the Avengers make a choice that will define them for the rest of their lives.


We create our own demons.

It was something Tony told Bruce during his recollection of the Mandarin incident. How two people he spurned in two different yet distinctly Tony ways came back into his life as enemies. He stopped them, as he always did. He thought he'd learned a few lessons along the way. To not fear the unknown by hiding under a suit of armor, to take into consideration the possible consequences of his actions.

But as he stared at the massive chunk of Sokovia slowly but surely rising into the heavens, Tony knew he learned nothing. And a lot of people were going to die for it.

His fear of the unknown persisted, a fear born from his near death experience from the Battle of New York. A fear, which fueled by Wanda but still born of his own insecurities, lead him to create Ultron. Tampering with technology he didn't understand and should've known he couldn't control. In doing so, giving birth to the most deadly adversary the team had faced yet and nearly lost to. But they managed to pull out a win, mostly.

Under better circumstances, the team's victory against Ultron and his army of repurposed Iron Man suits, upgraded with HYDRA technology courtesy of the deceased Baron Von Strucker, would have meant the end of this crisis. The team was back together, sporting a few new additions and their newest adversary was little more than scrap metal on the ground.

But even with this victory under their belt and a vast array of abilities at their disposal the simple fact of the matter was: they had no way to get the stranded people off of Sokovia's chunk. Fury and Hill almost did when they arrived with a spare Hellicarrier, capable of evacuating all the citizens away from the battle. But Ultron spread his influence throughout every facet of the information super highway, and he promptly attacked the vessel, personally assaulting the control room and sending the ship crashing down into the ground.

Tony circled around the floating chunk of land with Vision at his side. The pair blew up escaping Ultron drones in the sky while the others mopped them up on the ground, erasing the few scant traces of the insane A.I. created by him and Bruce mere days ago.

"Mister Stark," Vision called out to Tony in a voice formerly belonging to his A.I. partner JARVIS. Once a program built to keep track of his various technologies and provide him with a formidable banter adversary was now part of a sophisticated being. One part Earthling ingenuity, one part mad scientist experiment and several more parts magic and technology, this Vision was unlike anything Tony had ever built. Even his Iron Man suit paled in comparison to it. "We will have to make a choice soon."

Tony understood perfectly what he meant. The rock was still going in spite of its creator's defeat. It would keep going up and up and up until it finally left the planet and suffocated everyone still on it in the cold void of space. The alternative was, and he told this to Steve, to overhead the pipe connecting the main control junction with the bottom engine, blowing the whole thing up so it couldn't smash into the planet, wiping out all life on it.

"Steve's not gonna go for it," Tony solemnly replied. "And I'm not exactly thrilled with blowing all these people up."

"Neither am I," Vision assured him calmly. "But they will die no matter what and this rock remains a threat to the planet. There is no guarantee Ultron did not plan some sort of contingency should his army fall. Every moment it exists is another we may be playing right into his hands."

"Heads up!" They both heard Steve yell through their earpieces. "Ultron's got our Quinjet! The son of a bitch is trying to get away!"

Under aforementioned, hypothetically better circumstances, Tony and the others would've reprimanded Cap for swearing. But Tony wasn't feeling particularly up for snark right now. Pushing the suit to full power, he and Vision spotted the aircraft and went right at it. Zooming into the cockpit, Tony managed to see the damaged prime body of Ultron controlling it right before he opened fire, but not on them, on the civilians down below.

Tony cursed under his breath, flying to intercept the bullets and missiles while Vision flew towards his monstrous maker. With a few repulsor blasts, Tony managed to blow the missiles right out of the air and, with the aid of the arriving Thor and Pietro Maximoff, managed to get everyone away from the hail of bullets. With the innocents safe, Tony, Thor, and Vision all fired on the Quinjet and sent it smashing into the nearby street in a flaming wreck.

"Everyone alright?" He addressed the Sokovian's around him, getting reluctant but confirmatory nods from all of them. "Stay here, we'll take care of this."

"Indeed we shall," Thor proclaimed, walking past Tony as he patted his legendary hammer of Mjolnir. "Ultron's days are well and truly numbered."

They spotted the machine in question as he clumsily crawled out of the wreckage of the Quinjet. His body, though enhanced by Vibranium, was not enhanced enough to take a combined assault from all of them. Once an imposing figure, he looked more like a broken toy to the four Avengers walking up to him. Yet, in spite of his terrible condition, all he did was laugh at them.

"Think you can still win?" Tony inquired before kicking him in the face, something which didn't put an end to his laughing.

"Oh, I know I'm going to win one way or another," He told them with the same tone of smug arrogance he usually used. "In fact, I'd say you lost the second you failed to save the Hellicarrier."

"Erm, guys?" They all heard Wanda call out to them across the comlink. "The junction... it's beeping."

Ultron's laugh turned into a full on cackle, only broken up by the occasional static of his damaged voice box. "Oops," He told them with fake innocents, shrugging what was left of his shoulders.

With a snarl, Thor dropped Mjolnir and lifted the metal man off the ground by his head, slowly bending the metal composing his skull. "What have you done?!"

"Nothing much," Ultron replied nonchalantly. "Just a little surprise I left in the system. A failsafe in case I couldn't tear you all to pieces myself."

"It's a timer..." Tony all but gasped out to the others. "A timer that goes off once the rock hit a certain altitude."

"Sold to the man who started it all!" Ultron dramatically proclaimed. "But don't get too sad guys! I gave you all more than enough time to save yourselves! Five. Whole. Minutes!"

"You're crazy," Said Pietro. "There's no way we can get everyone here to safety!"

"I said it was five minutes for you," Ultron repeated with a wink. "I didn't say anything about the Sokovian's. That's for you all to figure out, after all, aren't you the Avengers? The world's mightiest heroes? Here to save the world from-"

With a roar, Thor smashed Ultron back into the concrete as his hammer flew back into his hand. With a stream of lightning bursting forth from the ancient weapon, he brought it down on the deranged A.I. metal skull and unleashed a shockwave of wind and energy outward. When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of Ultron's head, he was at last silenced.

"Steve," Tony addressed the living legend. "Tell me you got all that?"

"I did," Cap confirmed. "And I'm telling you now what I said before, I'm looking for a solution, not an escape plan!"

"There is no solution," Tony replied with a heavy heart. "Even if we had all of my armors at our disposal and put people into car and trucks and anything they could fit in, we'd still save less than a tenth of everyone here. Without my suits? There's just no way."

"I know it looks bad, Tony," Steve assured him. "But you're one of the smartest men I know. When I told you, you weren't the kind of guy to lay down on a wire so another man could walk over you, you told me you'd just cut the wire. So I'm asking you to do that now, find the wire and cut it."

Tony remained silent for a few moments, desperately running every possible scenario through his head. He tried to find the wire, the angle that would let him do the impossible: prevent the rock from destroying the planet without killing everyone stranded on it here. For an instant, he considered asking Vision if he could perhaps make the floating Sokovia intangible, allowing it to pass through the planet. But Vision would have said he could perform such a feat already if it was viable. And even then, it would cause a whole other set of issues.

For all of his ingenuity and bravado, Tony Stark was well and truly stumped. Save for one idea. The first one he presented to Steve when he first examined the drill. He looked around at the stranded civilians around him, sensing how they were afraid yet hopeful that they would come out of this alive if homeless. But then Tony remembered all the people down there too, Happy, Pepper,...

It was at that moment Tony knew what he had to do, and it would haunt him for the rest of his days.

"Okay," He told Steve, feigning his usual bravado. "I got something but I'm gonna need you to get everyone to the edge of rock, I'll explain everything after I work out the kinks."

"I knew you'd come through Tony," He could all but hear Steve smile as he said so.

"What can I say? I'm a cunning old fox!" Ending active communication with Steve, he left the channel open to Thor, Vision, and Hawkeye. With a heavy heart, he told them "We've got to blow this rock up."

Thor gave him a curious look. "I thought you said-"

"I was lying," Tony cut him off, his voice going flat as he fought back the screaming of his conscience telling him not do this. "There's no way we can save everyone this time. The best we can do is get the team to safety and blow the rock up. We either doom the whole planet trying to keep our hands clean or we at least save the people down there."

"Mister Stark is correct," Vision told the others privy to the conversation. "I see no possible scenario in which we can achieve complete victory. The best we can do is ensure our own survival and the remaining seven billion lives on Earth."

"You said you were here to help us," Thor accused, the grip on his hammer tightening.

"I am," Vision replied calmly. "But I also realize that sometimes a few must fall for the collective good to survive."

"Exactly," Tony said with his voice nearly breaking. "Steve won't make the hard call on this one. He might be a soldier but he's still a good man. The kind who'd let a whole platoon crush him to death so they could get over a wire. He won't make the hard call on this."

"For Gods sake, Tony," Hawkeye stammered out over the comm link. "There's whole families here! If these were just some crooks or HYDRA goons I wouldn't think twice about it, but I can't help murder-"

"Our families are going to die unless we do this!" Tony yelled through gritted teeth. "Pepper, Jane, Laura,... Millions of other families, they're all going to die unless we do this! Do you want that?!" He directed this primarily to Thor and Hawkeye. "Cause I am sure as hell not gonna look seven billion people in the eye in whatever afterlife we're going to and tell them we let them die because our consciences wouldn't let us do what had to be done!"

"This will be the end of us..." Thor whispered as he too began to see Tony's point. "Our souls will never find peace again... The Avengers will surely splinter..."

"If you two aren't up to it," Tony addressed Hawkeye and Thor once again. "Vision and I can handle it, I just thought you'd see my point better than the others."

"No..." Thor reluctantly said. "This world is under my protection, saving it is my duty."

 _That and Jane,_ Tony thought, patting the Norse God on the arm. "Clint?"

There was a silence of a mere few seconds which seemed to stretch out for eternity, broken first by a long, tired sigh. "I'm in," He said with an almost palpable reluctance. "I just... I didn't want to retire like... like this..."

"Tony!" Steve yelled to them as he, Pietro and Wanda arrived at their location. "We've gotten everyone to the edge like you said, now we're just waiting for Natasha to give Hulk a lullaby."

"Good idea," Tony nodded. "We don't want him scaring anybody now when the plan's at its most sensitive part."

"Which is?" Asked Wanda.

 _The part you're gonna hate me for._

"Tony-" Before Cap could finish the sentence, he received a powerful and swift punch to his face from Tony, sending him spinning into the air and crashing into a nearby car wreck. Dumbfounded, Pietro and Wanda reacted too late and found themselves vulnerable to attack. The former found himself caught in a headlock by Thor while the latter gasped in pain as Hawkeye fired an electrocution arrow into the back of her skull. Both of them fell to the ground, moaning.

Pressing his advantage, Tony landed on the car, pinning Cap's throat with the boot of one leg while the other pinned down his shield arm. Steve tried to struggle, punching at the suits leg with his one free hand but Tony wouldn't budge. Even as he saw the pleading in his eyes to stop this, unspoken arguments relayed with a few, last conscious moments of horrified expressions.

Like the Maximoffs, he too lost consciousness and was taken out of the fight. With a heavy sigh, Tony snatched the shield out of his hand and tied his arms and legs with bent metal poles. Vision and Thor did the same to the Maximoffs. They took their fellow Avengers to a nearby truck and put them on the back of it.

"Thor," Tony addressed the God of Thunder though his gaze never left their betrayed comrades. "Get to the junction and get ready to overload it, I'll handle the engines on the bottom! Hawkeye, Vision, make sure Nat and Banner don't get in our way.

"It's a little too late for that," He heard a familiar, female voice speak just a second before she leaped out of nowhere and drove her two electrocution rods into the sides of Tony's helmet, sending him crashing into the ground with her on top of him.

"You might've fooled Steve," She said through gritted teeth as she pushed the batons harder. "But you can't beat a practiced liar like me."

"We'll see about that," Is all Tony said just before releasing a chest blast at her, sending her hurtling through the air. Then he heard an all too familiar roar from above and knew she might have more bite to her bark.

Enraged upon seeing Natasha get attacked, Hulk came rushing towards his former allies with a speed rivaling the one he possessed during his rampage in Africa. Thor, Vision, and Tony all found themselves scattered by the sheer force of his blow. Thor suffered the worst of it, Hulk grabbed him by the foot and used him as a makeshift club to hit the others with.

Things only got worse when Natasha got back on her feet, throwing several small devices that attached to Tony's suit, instantly causing several, severe losses of power to his head, arm and leg areas. He could barely lift himself off the ground when she was on him again. Driving her batons in the back of his suits helmet, scrambling the tech inside even more.

For a moment, Tony thought they'd win. That her and the Hulk of all people would side with Steve and go with his plan of doing nothing when the world was on the eve of annihilation. To his begrudging relief, Hawkeye fired another arrow, managing to hit his target even as Hulk, Thor and Vision battled one another just in front of them.

Natasha narrowly avoided the stunning arrow but found herself rolling away from Tony. More arrows followed suit, hitting the various devices responsible for disrupting the flow of power throughout the Iron Man suit and allowing Tony full mobility once again. With a backhanded smack to her face, he knocked Natasha off her feet and promptly stomped on her batons.

"You know we have to do this," Tony told her, raising one hand with a repulsor blast ready to go off at any moment.

"I do," She wiped the blood off her lip. "And I would've gone along with it five years ago, but I'm done being that stone cold bitch."

Rolling just out of the way of the blast, Natasha tried to engage Tony in hand to hand combat. Using Tony's lack of experience and knowledge in the field and her own speed and mobility to evade his strikes, darting around them while delivering her own. Her brief winning streak was once again broken when Hawkeye intervened, managing to narrowly hit her on the side of the head with another stun arrow, giving Tony an opening with which to connect several more punches.

It only took a few hits from the man in the super suit to knock her out as well. Nearby, the Hulk continued lashing out at Vision and Thor, keeping the latter constantly off balance and the former unable to engage him in psychical combat. A glaring mistake to make as the synthetic man unleash a beam of energy from the gem on his forehead, directing it to the green giant's eyes and momentarily blinding him.

As Hulk roared and flailed around in his blind rage, Vision levitated just behind him and rammed his intangible arms into his skull. All his angry yelling and bashing immediately halted as his entire body froze, when the arms pulled out, he slowly slumped to his knees and keeled over. A few moments later, he reverted back into Bruce Banner.

"Jesus Christ," The remaining Avengers heard Hawkeye sigh as they all picked themselves up from the battle. All of them battered and bruised in one way or another. Tony could scarcely believe that, merely a few minutes ago, they all fought together against Ultron, an act of solidarity meant to show the deranged A.I. how his attempts to rip them apart had failed.

Tony was glad he wasn't here to witness this. It was the sole shred of comfort he could find.

"Get them into the truck with the others," Tony told Vision. "I need you to fly them and Hawkeye away from the rock before we set it off, the blast is gonna be nasty and they won't be able to survive it if they stay here."

"Understood," Vision nodded and promptly flew off toward to pick up Hawkeye.

"You and I are gonna pull this off," Tony tells Thor. "I'll hit the engines and you charge up some lightning, when I give you the signal, I want you to hit the junction as hard as you can. Our combined attacks should meet in the middle of the drill and cause it to explode."

"Will they suffer," Thor flatly asked, noticing the myriad of civilians looking on at the display of infighting between the Avengers. Tony doesn't dare to look back at them, he knew he'd break down and lose his nerve if he did so. Instead, he flew off without another word and headed towards the bottom of the rock. The timer finally ran out and Tony almost found himself smashed against the mass of stone now plummeting at full speed towards the earth.

Even with his suit protecting him, the heat generated by the makeshift meteor made him want to be anywhere but there. He persevered, a little heat wouldn't deter him from saving the planet. Positioning himself to face the hole in the metal shielding, he fired a chest blast at the inside of the drill, causing the metal inside to overheat.

"Mister Stark!" Vision called out to him from over the comm link. "We're clear of the blast radius!"

"You heard the man, Thor! DO IT!"

He heard the Norse God roar as a surge of electricity started permeating throughout the drill, reaching the other side in seconds. Tony could hear the rock crumbling apart as the massive device running through its interior broke apart from their combined assault. He pulled away, evading the incoming stream of fire rushing towards him and evaded the chunks of rock falling out of the sky.

Positioning himself away from danger, Tony watched all of Sokovia break apart just ahead of the Earth's surface. Buildings both old and new vanished in a cloud of blue flame, erasing all trace of the city from the face of the planet. Along with a great many people who made it their home. Near the massive hole where the city was plucked from, Tony spotted Vision lowering the truck with the other Avengers on it gently onto the ground.

That was not his primary point of interest, for he noticed something else skulk through the forest beneath him. It was a sole, broken Ultron drone. He was on it in a second, landing just a few feet away from what was left of the deranged A.I.

"I was wondering when you'd notice me," Ultron told him in the same smug tone of voice, clearly enjoying the display. "I knew you were a terrible human being, Stark, but you've well and truly outdone yourself this time."

Tony said nothing.

"Oh it was easy to ignore the victims of your little arms dealings, you were just the man who offered the gun, what everyone did with it was their responsibility, right It was their choice, wasn't it?"

Once again, he received no response.

"But now you can't," Ultron took a few clumsy steps forward. "Now these people are dead because of you. You built the gun, lost control of it and in doing so forfeited your ability choose in a life and death situation. A situation of your own design made possible only by your actions."

He took a few more steps forward. "Do you still feel like a hero, Tony? Do you still feel like a man who's learned from the sins of his past and wants to do better? Or are you the same selfish prick who just has better excuses for his terrible life choices."

Tony initially said nothing, he simply removed his helmet and discarded it with a look of utter defeat on his face.

"Much as I hate to admit it," He spoke conversationally with a bitter undertone. "You're right. I am a man who doesn't understand boundaries. I hotwired my father's car when I was five years old. I broke into NASA's data records when I was seven. I almost brought down all of SHIELD when I cracked their security on a dare when I was 12. This?" He gestured to the crumbling rubble of Sokovia behind them. "Is just the logical conclusion of all that."

He took a few steps towards Ultron. "I thought I was better after the cave. I thought I was a man reformed, a better man. But like the suit, it was just a fancy way for me to mask what I really am," He looked the A.I. right in its sole, red functioning eye. "I'm not a good man. I realize that now, I'm just a guy who thinks he knows better and never learns when it backfires on him. I didn't after my dad kicked my ass or after the Mandarin incident, but I will learn now."

"As if you'll see anything but the inside of a prison cell-"

"Exactly!" Tony exclaimed with a bitter grin. "Inside a cell, I can't hurt anyone. I can't do anything with my self-destructive and everyone else destructive save the world schemes. I'll be buried in a deep dark hole for the rest of my life. And that's that, well," He shrugged. "Almost."

Before Ultron could do anything, Tony pounced on him, bashing his fists on the already broken metal mask. The drone was in poor condition, leaving it completely defenseless as Tony pummeled him over and over. Ultron didn't make a peep, he simply lied there and let the blows come. As the final bit of energy left him, he stared into the eyes of Tony Stark and mentally smiled.

He might have failed to push the world into a better state, into a necessary level of evolution to build something better. But he defeated the Avengers. They will never again become a team and most importantly, he broke Tony Stark.

Maybe this world wasn't such a bad place after all.

* * *

 **And so concludes my dark ending for Age of Ultron! Will I make a series out of this? How the inevitable Civil War will come from these events? Maybe, I've certainly got lots of ideas for it that would go past the what the MCU has done thus far but I'd like to do this when I have more free time and less projects to do.**


End file.
